« Tout art et toute investigation […] tendent vers quelque bien »

The Aristotelian proposition that every art, inquiry, action, and choice tends toward some good becomes Komatsu’s defense of carrying the Air Chrysalis rewrite forward. In his exchange with Tengo, philosophical optimism is less a settled answer than a way to contain doubt: Komatsu insists that the manuscript is nearly perfect and too far advanced to abandon, while Tengo immediately tests the moral reach of the idea by asking what Aristotle would say about the Holocaust.

The Saying and Its Source

Komatsu invokes a passage from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: “All art and inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good.” He attributes the thought to Aristotle and recommends that Tengo read him, explaining that he turns to the Greek philosophers when he has nothing else to read and always finds something to draw from them.

The saying’s broad scope matters to Komatsu’s use of it. It does not concern art alone: it places artistic work alongside inquiry, action, and choice, making the creation of a novel part of a larger claim about what human endeavors seek. Komatsu then reduces that claim to a practical gloss: everything ultimately leads to the Good, which he describes as the consequence of everything.

Komatsu’s Case for Continuing the Rewrite

The philosophical appeal follows a concrete argument about the manuscript. Komatsu tells Tengo that he has remade Air Chrysalis far more beautifully than expected and that the text is almost perfect. He predicts that it will very probably win the newcomers’ prize and become widely discussed. Given that prospect, he says, burying it now would be a kind of crime; the undertaking has already advanced too far.

Komatsu’s quotation therefore functions as persuasion rather than detached exposition. He uses the expected artistic and public success of the rewrite to reinforce his insistence that the project should proceed. His conclusion that doubt can be left until tomorrow turns the maxim into an immediate instruction: stay calm now, preserve the work, and postpone the unresolved questions.

Tengo’s Challenge and the Saying’s Limit

Tengo asks what Komatsu’s reference means, then counters with the Holocaust. The question places a historical atrocity against the claim that everything tends toward the Good, exposing the difficulty of treating the maxim as a universal assurance. Komatsu’s widening smile follows, but the exchange supplies no answer from him to Tengo’s challenge.

That unanswered question keeps the saying morally unsettled. Within the scene, it can serve Komatsu’s practical confidence in the rewrite, but Tengo’s objection prevents that confidence from becoming a demonstrated account of how suffering or evil could lead to good. The maxim remains both an aesthetic rationale for preserving Air Chrysalis and a proposition whose reach the conversation refuses to settle.